


Aftermath

by Tammany



Category: Supernatural
Genre: After death, Aftermath of Season 12, Friendship., Gen, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 09:37:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11159202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: This is really a sort of elegy for what should have been, but never was. Sometimes I get a bit tired of the narrative focusing so tightly on Dean. This is a story that begged to be told, and never was--but which would have fit both Sam and Crowley down to the ground, and provided a bit of a balance from Dean and Cas.So. Season 12 has come, and gone...and Sam is dealing with the aftermath.





	Aftermath

Sam missed Crowley.

It should have been Cas, he thought. Dean missed Cas—every minute, every day, the loss of the angel throbbed and burned in Dean’s heart, changing him. Darkening him. Dean would have said it was Cas Sam should miss. After all, Cas was, well, “good.” Not one of the monsters…for some weird, fucked up meaning of the word “monster.” Once you knew a few angels your sense of monsterdom shifted a bit.

It should have been Cas.

They’d had so much on their hands with Jack, though, that it hadn’t really been something they talked about. Not that there hadn’t always been a lot they didn’t talk about….

Sam was a leader, now. He’d always thought it would be Dean, but no. Dean had intentionally faded back, leaving the role of “leader of the hunters” to Sam. Sam wasn’t sure he liked it. He was sure he was better at it than anyone else he could see. Dean advised him—often gave him the worst possible advice. Sam listened, and let it roll around his mind awhile, and saw a way to make it play. Not Dean’s way. Dean’s way usually got people killed. But Sam figured out his own ways.

His own way was new, and Dean said bad things about it. Combining the good monsters and the good hunters to police all the rotten apples on both sides of the hunter/monster divide worked, though. It was changing the nature of the game. Now it wasn’t what you were that mattered, it was what you did. If you did good—you were good. If you did evil, then you were going to get a short, sharp visit from Chimera. (And, oh, God, the way some of those back-hills hunters and monsters said the word. They never did get it right. Most said it “Chimmer-ah.” The sillier ones sang “Chim-Chimmeree” from Mary Poppins as the group’s theme song… Dean swore. Sam…endured it. It worked.)

A lot of the time he was too busy to miss people, and there were always so many to miss in any case. So, why did he miss Crowley?

“Hey, he got better from us than he ever deserved,” Dean said, the only time Sam tried to bring it up.

Sam, remembering a demon turned almost human, crying because he just wanted someone to love him, found he disagreed.

“I just wish he could come back,” he said, turning away from Dean and his eternal slice of pie. “We never got to thank him.”

“For what? He got what he wanted….no thanks to him. Mom paid that price.” Dean couldn’t take self-sacrifice at face value. You had to get it right, too…

Had Crowley gotten it right?

There was no rip in time and space, glowing and rippling and letting things through anymore.

That seemed right enough to Sam. His mother might have had the final action that pulled Lucifer through that closing gap—but the gap was sealed with Crowley’s blood. Crowley’s life.

And there was nothing left of Crowley. Rowena was dead. His son was dead. Hell struggled on without him, and given the nature of hell the odds were no one missed their old King.

Sam thought of all the times Crowley came through for them. Yes, he was a twisty son of a bitch, and certain to try to play things to his own advantage. But—who wasn’t? Really? Who didn’t fight to have things end the way they wanted? What was it Crowley used to say? Even when I lose—I win. He’d lost. He’d won. Lucifer was pent up, barred from this world.

“He was tired,” Sam told himself.

So tired. He remembered the demon, bound and dying—but turning human, with every new injection of Sam’s holy-water drenched blood. Frightened. Lonely. Lost…

He remembered the look of anger and grief when Gavin gave himself back to his own fate…and died.

Sam knew what that felt like. He knew what was behind the look in those dark eyes. He’d hurt that bad.

They never did seem to thank Crowley, he thought. Or care much what might hurt the demon. And, yet, the demon had…

Loved. Loved them. Not that he’d ever admit it, but for the love of…Chuck…he followed Dean around with the same puppy-dog devotion Cas had always shown. And he...

He…

Avoided me, Sam thought. He evaded me. It was always Dean for him.

No. It wasn’t. He knew. Crowley had known. Dean was evasive action. Dean was a distraction. Dean was a competition—the bait that lured both Cas and Sam in, no matter what. Crowley had to try to hold Dean.

But there was only one person he might have been close to, if he’d dared. If Sam had dared.

One more syringe of blood and holy water. Two? Three?

Sam would have given his life for Crowley.

Crowley had given his life in return.

“He did it for his own reasons,” Dean had snarled when Sam tried to talk about it. “He was a fuckin’ crossroads demon. He always won. He always got the better of his deals. That’s all it was. He won.”

Won what?

Crowley had never been like other demons. Certainly not like Lucifer. Crowley hated the things Lucifer wanted to do to Earth. He always ended up on the side of the Winchester boys because, in the dark of night, in the moment of despair, he hated Hell and Lucifer and all the dark workings. Even his evil was human and petty and small and hurt—the tantrum of a lonely, angry child, abandoned and abused and striking back.

Sometimes Sam thought he saw him. On a street corner. Sitting in a half-lit diner at night, for all the world like a ghost come to haunt him. Lurking in the dark shadows of the Men of Letters lair.

“For fuck’s sake, I’m gone,” he whispered to Sam at night. “Let me go.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, clinging tighter to the memory. “I miss you.”

“So add me to the grand tally of the missing, and move on.”

“I need you.”

“That’s a load of cock. Try again, Moose.”

Sam turned over in bed, and wrapped the blankets tight around his shoulders. “I don’t like leading the Chimera,” he whispered.

“Yeah. You do.”

“No more than you liked ruling Hell.”

“Well, there you are, then. You like it.”

“It’s lonely.”

He could hear the vast, gusty, ever-so-Scottish sigh. “Who knew? Yeah. It’s lonely.”

“You were my friend.” _You were my Castiel—my angel._

“I was a petty devil. One of the damned. No more.”

He had died with whatever traces remained of Sam’s blood and holy water in him. He’d died with whatever had lingered of a soul miscarried.

“You were mine.”

A final sigh.

“That I was, Moose.” It was a soft voice, now, and fading. “That I was. And…you were mine.”

Sam missed Crowley—and he had begun to understand he always would.

"Thank you," he whispered to the ghost who was only a memory.

He could almost see the crooked, devilish grin.

"You're welcome, Moose," Crowley said, but didn't speak again.


End file.
